Overview

I created this alphabet poster to showcase different inventions, specifically older inventions with “patent art.” For each letter in the alphabet, the poster would have an invention that starts with a letter in the alphabet. For example, “Airplane” for the letter “A.”

Making the poster

To create the poster, I sourced 26 images from old patents (one for each letter in the alphabet), cleaned them, and then turned the images into vectors. Once all of the images were selected and cleaned, I created the initial draft of the poster, and selected the color scheme, and typography to be used in the poster. The initial draft was then refined until a finalized version was created.

Phase One: Sourcing and Cleaning Images

Below is the process of sourcing an invention for the letter D.

In this case, I selected “Dartboard” for the letter D.

Below is the patent for a Dartboard created in 1936 that I selected.

The patent image is labeled with different numbers and lines to describe and illustrate different parts of the invention. Using Photoshop, I removed the labels from the image, so that only the image itself remained. Below is the cleaned image.

To increase quality of the image and allow for easier manipulation, I used Illustrator to turn the cleaned raster drawing into a vector to be used in the poster.

Below is the vector version of the image. The image is themed to match the webstie. The buttons below can be used to change the theme of the website and see how the image updates.

Phase 2: Making The Draft Poster

Once all of the poster images, were selected and cleaned I chose an initial color scheme and typography as well as created an initial layout for the poster.

The color of the initial poster used a light blue background (HEX color #4A6DE5) and white color for the text and images. This color scheme was chosen to mimic the colors of a blueprint and fit the theme of the patent art being "blueprints" for inventions that were going to be created or had already been created. The typeface used was "Futura PT Book" which was chosen for its sans-serif nature and its hard edges to fit with the clean and precise look of blueprints.

Using the base images, invention names and relevant letters, I played around with different layouts for each of the letter assets to go in the poster.

Once the individual letter elemetns were created, they were aligned in a grid to create an initial design for the alphabet poster:

From the first design, I refined the poster. The background blue color was made darker (HEX #283379) to increase contrast with the white. The white grid lines from the first design were removed and the letters were arranged so that they formed an implied grid. A smaller grid was added to the background of the poster to make it look more like a blueprint, and the layout of the individual letter components was changed.

In the final design iteration, the configuration of the individual letter components was changed to make the implied grid more obvious.